Jimmy Stone's Ghost Town (10 page)

"This is Gasp. He's a ghost and he's nothing
to be afraid of."

Gasp shakes his head in agreement with
everything I've said so far and tosses David a sheepish little wave
and smile. It's actually kind of charming the way he does it.

"He's nothing to be
afraid
of?!"

"Yeah," I tell David. "I
mean, I know why you are. I was at first too, but now it's cool.
He's a good guy. He's our
guide
."

"Our guide to what?" David
asks, skeptical as ever of this place he knows
nothing
about.

"Ghost Town," I say. "We're in a place
called Ghost Town."

"Ghost Town?"

"Ghost Town," I tell him again and make my
way across the empty room toward David and Trex. I sit down on the
cold, concrete floor next to Trex and start to scratch behind his
ears. Trex loves this and his little hind legs start pumping a mile
a minute until you can actually hear his paws on the cement. Tick,
tick, tick, tick, tick tick.

"Do you remember the tree we found, David?"
I look up toward him and motion with my eyes for him to think back
to the clearing in the woods. "The one with the GT carved into
it?"

"Yeah..."

"That's how we got here.
Don't ask me
how
we got here other than that. I have no idea. Apparently, Gasp
here has some
real
answers, but he's yet to clue me in on many of
them."

"What's he waiting for?"

"Good question," I say and we both slowly
turn our heads toward Gasp who is trying to disappear into the
walls of Room 7. "Maybe we should ask him."

"Who?" asks Gasp, as if he doesn't already
know. "Me?"

"Yeah," we both say loudly and
simultaneously. "You."

"Right," says Gasp and floats toward us,
pulling up to a spot right in front of the three of us and settling
in for what we think will be some long explanation of why we're
here, what we're doing, and where we're going.

I've been hoping, all
along, that Gasp is our Wizard behind the curtain - our man behind
the scenes that has
all
the answers. I'm
still
hoping for that.

"Jimmy, here, is right.
You're in Ghost Town. My name
is
Gasp. And, you're meant to be here."

"Meant to?" David asks
quickly. "What do you mean,
meant
to
?"

"I mean, David, that
you're here for a reason. You're here with a purpose. And you're
here because we
want
you here."

"But why?" we both ask at
the very same time, our tones getting just slightly higher-pitched
the more anxious (and closer) we are to finding out just what the
hell is going on. "What reason could you possibly have for
wanting
us
here
in Ghost Town?"

"Well," says Gasp as he looks down at the
floor. "It's like this, you see..."

This is the first time
I've seen Gasp appear to be
searching
for something. Up until
this point he's had all the answers and seemed to know
everything
before
it happened. He even seemed to know everything I was thinking
before I even thought it. But now, it really looked to me like Gasp
was struggling with whatever it was he trying to say.

"We..."

"You
what
?"

"We..."

"Gasp!" I shouted, fed up
with all the beating around the bush and wondering and confusion
and just about everything else going on in Ghost Town right now.
"You told me that you're our guide. That means you're supposed
to
guide
us
. Not the other way around. You're
supposed to tell
us
what to do!"

I'm not sure where all this came from, but I
feel like I've got this whole new assertiveness ever since I
arrived in Ghost Town. It's like part of me was missing before we
got here and now I've got it all back. I can channel it and pull it
right out. It's great, actually.

"We need your help," Gasp finally said.
"We've needed it for weeks now and when you finally came crashing
into my room through the portal you opened with that tree, it was
like all our prayers had been answered."

Whoa
, I thought.
They needed MY help?
All this time I thought I was here by some weird coincidence and it
turns out Gasp and his people need ME?!

"You," I said, "need me?"

"That's right," said Gasp as he shook his
head and looked down at me, David, and Trex. "We need you."

"And if we help you with whatever it is you
need our help with," I say as I continue to scratch Trex behind his
big floppy dog ears, "you'll show us how to get home?"

"Of course," Gasp said. "That's been the
plan all along."

"There's been a plan?" I asked, confused
again.

"Jimmy," said Gasp as he
turned his back to us and floated back toward the door to Room 7.
He stopped in front of the door and waved his arm in front until it
slammed closed, the big red slab like a huge monolith in front of
us. "There's
always
been a plan."

Gasp spun around and faced us again. He
started to materialize and become more solid right in front of our
eyes and, in a matter of seconds, he was standing in front of us
just as if he were another boy from school.

David, Trex, and I all
looked at each other as if we'd just seen a ghost. A ghost that
turned into a human. And, surprisingly, that's
exactly
what we saw. Or at least
that's certainly what it
looked
like.

"Now," he said glaring right across the room
at us and breaking just the slightest smile. "Do you want to know
why, exactly, we need your help?"

Chapter Twenty

"Ghost Town," Gasp began, "used to be a
pretty quiet place. It was all ghosts milling around, minding their
own business, and never really bothering anyone. We all kept to
ourselves and did our own thing."

"Sounds just like
Bored
sylvania," I say
and elbow David in the ribs to indicate that he's supposed
to
get
my joke
about our boring little town. He chuckles, but barely.

"Nevermind," I say and shut up so Gasp can
continue on with his story. "Inside joke."

"Well, Jimmy, as I was
saying. Ghost Town used to be a little happy-go-lucky place for
ghosts to wander around and live their
after
lives. And it really was, sir.
It was a great place to hang out for a while after you passed on
from
your
world."

"That is," Gasp said, "until the last few
weeks."

"What--"

"I'll tell you, Jimmy, if you promise to
stop interrupting." Gasp winked at us and we made the motion of
zipping our lips, locking them up, and throwing away the key.

"So, the past few weeks... Well, let me back
up for a moment."

Gasp took a deep breath and seemed to gather
himself. It was almost as if he was pulling all the strings to the
story together inside of his head, like you might tighten a pair of
shoes when you pull hard on the laces.

"Here in the center of Ghost Town, we have a
building that houses all the Matters of Ghost Town. The Consulate.
The Elders. The Government. Everything you might need to run a
successful town goes through this central building. I believe, in
your world, you might call it a Municipal Building. Here we just
call it Centralia."

"So, in Centralia, there's
a
central
mailbox. All the mail that should go to the Town Elders goes
directly into this mailbox so we can all see it. If one Elder gets
the mail first, we all agree to put it back until all the other
Elders have had a chance to read it. In certain situations, we even
have to call Meetings of Central Importance to discuss things of,
well, great importance. Like, things we really need to
address
now
."

Sheesh
.

"Gasp," I said before he could continue with
his lengthy tale, "I hate to break it to you, but this is starting
to become the longest story in the history of stories. You're
starting to put me to sleep, buddy."

"Yeah," said David, who'd been quiet and
just petting Trex the entire time Gasp had been talking. "Get on
with it!"

To be honest, I was pretty
shocked to hear David say
anything
that might require an exclamation point at the
end of his sentence.

"Oh," said Gasp, "I'm so
very sorry, Gentlemen. I didn't mean to
bore
you two. I mean, with so many
things you guys need to get done here in Ghost Town. Right? Oh, no.
That's right. You have
no idea
what you're supposed to be doing here in Ghost
Town yet. That's completely right. I totally forgot. I'm
your
guide
."

David and I look at each other, nod, and
decide that Gasp is right. We know we should probably keep our
mouths shut and let him tell us his story, long and boring or
not.

"Go ahead, Gasp."

"Well, thank you so much, Jimmy!"

I know he's being sarcastic, but I shake my
head anyway to let him know that I understand I was being an
idiot.

"Let me try to get to make this story a
little shorter by getting straight to the point." Gasp hunched down
a little and stared straight into my eyes. David peered on and Trex
even perked up his ears a bit, almost as if he understood what Gasp
was saying.

"Over the past seven
weeks, Jimmy, we've had
seven
Meetings of Central Importance."

"Wow," I say. "Really? Is that not
normal?"

"Let's put it this way,"
Gasp says. "In the previous two years before the past seven weeks,
we had a total of
one
Meeting of Central Importance."

David and I look at each other and Gasp
takes a deep breath before reiterating his point.

"One."

"I can see how crazy that
must be for you guys here in Ghost Town. That's a lot of meetings
and whatever has been happening must be
really
important, but I have to
wonder just what this all has to do with me?"

"I'm getting there, Jimmy. I promise you.
You're here to help us, and you will soon understand just how it is
that we need your assistance."

I can only imagine what
Gasp might be talking about. It's pretty obvious to me, David, and
probably even Trex at this point, that
something
funky is going on in Ghost
Town, but none of us have any clue what this has to do with
us.

Does Gasp want us to attend one of their
Meetings of Central Importance? Are they making us Town Elders? Are
we going to have to preside over one of their votes? Fight a war?
Fly a plane? Bust some ghosts? Who knows.

"For the past seven weeks, Jimmy, we've
received one letter per week - the exact same letter each time, in
fact - and every single time we've gotten this letter, we've had to
gather all the Town Elders for a Meeting of Central
Importance."

Gasp shook his head and crossed his arms
across his chest. He was clearly anxious about the entire
situation, and this was the first time it's shown since we've been
in Ghost Town.

"This is very serious business," Gasp said.
"We've lived a very happy life here in Ghost Town and we don't
intend for that to change. But these letters hold within them a
threat like we've never had here before. I mean, we've had very few
threats as it is, but it took us seven weeks to even understand how
we could combat the threats in these letters."

"Why did it take you so long if you've had
meetings after each and every one?" I asked.

"It took us so long,
Jimmy, because we didn't understand the letters. We didn't have any
idea what to do when the first one arrived and, when they started
to arrive every single week, we
really
had no idea what to
do."

"But I still don't
understand," I said quickly and looked around to Gasp, David, and
Trex. "If you and the rest of the Elders all sat down to discuss
these letters, how could
no one
figure out what was going on in them?"

"We didn't understand because we didn't know
who to turn to."

"What do you mean? There's no one here in
Ghost Town who could come to your rescue?"

"There is now," Gasp said. "There has been
since you and your friends arrived."

Now
I
was confused. Why me? Why David
and Trex? And how the hell were we going to help a bunch of
ghosts?

"But why us?" I asked. "Why do you need
me?"

Gasp stared me straight in the eye and bent
down to get even closer to my face, just to make sure I understood
what he was about to tell me.

"Every single letter," Gasp said, "was
addressed to Jimmy Stone."

My mouth fell open and, if I had been
standing at the time, I'm sure I would have fallen to my knees.

"Now, Jimmy, do you understand why it's your
help we need?"

Chapter Twenty One